May 16 2012 - The Cult are set to release a brand new record on May 22, 2012 entitled Choice of Weapon. The record was written by vocalist Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy (both are founding members of the band) and recorded in New York City, Los Angeles, the California high desert, and the band's Witch Mountain studios in the Hollywood Hills between July and December 2011. The current incarnation of The Cult has Astbury and Duffy joined by drummer John Tempesta and bassist Chris Wyse. An interesting sidebar to this record is that the band used 2 different producers for the final product - first Chris Goss laid the foundations and then Bob Rock put on the finishing touches. The press release we received claimed: "the album’s 10 tracks, reveal the band at its rawest and most visceral, encapsulating cinematic visions and themes of love, revolt and redemption.... It reflects the current discontent and destruction of our eco systems, the search for individual meaning against a tide of rampant materialism, narcissism and disconnected lives."

Wow - that's some deep stuff. We have had this album for about 6 weeks now and will review it track by track to see if we agree with the above claim.

The Cult Track 1: Honey From A Knife - The first song on a record is perhaps the most important. You only get one chance at a first impression, and the first song is the band's chance to grab the listener. The Cult picked well here as hard thumping rock kicks off the album and within seconds we hear Astbury's remarkably distinctive voice. "I'm running down Lafayette, my bloody shirt soaked through, I was beaten and confused..." Great up tempo rocker with a sense of urgency and the song ends with the statement of "Fucked up children"

Track 2: Elemental Light - This song brings the tempo down a bit (but not the raw energy). It builds up continually with beautiful interplay between Duffy's guitars and the ever thumping back end. The chorus is simply "Elemental Light, you're beautiful, youre beautiful" in a powerful and hypnotic tone.

Track 3: The Wolf - Fairly standard rocker. Steady drum and bass thumping through the song with Astbury and Duffy playing on each other. The chorus is not the strongest on the album and this one is best enjoyed on headphones rather than cruising with it cranked to 11.

Track 4: Life > Death - Oh yea! The sweet melodic beginning sets a different pace from the first 3 songs. "You Break the man, leave his shell on the ground," is the opening line of this slow burner that really highlights Astbury's impressive vocals. Without a doubt one of the best songs on the album for its raw emotion. This song really takes a hold of you and touches you the way good music is supposed to.

Track 5: For The Animals - First single from the album and the absolute best choice. This is The Cult at its rocking best. Addictive chorus, piano accompanying the beat, classic Duffy guitar solo, a mid song slow down with the lyrics "For all the children, staring down at the barrel of a gun." This song should be on every rock radio station on the planet, and if you only hear one song from the album make it this one. No holds barred heavy rock.

Track 6: Amnesia - Continuing where For The Animals left off in energy, Amnesia is more good rock. Lacking an addictive chorus this one wont make it to radio but that is a good thing. It leaves hidden gems for listeners of this album to explore. Great instrumental ending with nicely layered guitars over the bumping rhythm.

Track 7: Wilderness Now - Another slower song, but not as gripping as Life > Death. Not a bad song but the bar is set high with Track 4. Slowly builds up at the end of the song but then quickly slows back down.

Track 8: Lucifer - This song was available as a free download well before the album was released to give people a taste of things to come. This is a great song which will leave people guessing why The Cult is singing about the devil (which they aren't of course)." It actually has a very positive connotation" Astbury said about the song. Really good combination of the music and the vocals that make this song neither too heavy or too soft.

Track 9: A Pale Horse - Vocals, music, vocals, music is how this one starts with some cool interplay with Astbury and the rest of the band. Duffy's guitars really shine on this one with Astbury toning down the rawness during the chorus parts.

Track 10: This Night In The City Forever - Grab really good headphones and close your eyes for this one. I promise you will be transported somewhere. Hypnotic slower song with Astbury casting a spell with his voice. Clearly a Doors/Jim Morrison influence on this song and one would be hard pressed to distinguish which band is playing. Excellent climax at the last quarter of the song signalling the end of "The Choice Of Weapon" journey.

When we asked Ian Astbury how he would define success for this record he answered in the form of a question - "Does it resonate, and is there a place for it?" It most certainly resonates and there is a place for it in 2012 as much as there was a place for Electric in 1987. Our top three tracks are Life > Death, For the Animals and This Night In The City Forever.

Verdict: 5 out of 5. The Cult have delivered the goods regardless of whether you are into the band's deep philosophies or not - this is one damn good heavy rock album that happens to also be blessed with lyrics that matter. Destined to be on the next iteration of T-Mak World's Top 10 albums of the year

The Cult frontman has embraced everything from post-punk glam to pseudo-metal toughness, before finally settling comfortably into the plus-sized, Native American-themed throne of bloated rock-poet/beard enthusiast/fraud Jim Morrison.This is the version of Ian Astbury that recorded The Cult‘s newest album, “Choice Of Weapon” (the 2009 version of Astbury that declared The Cult would never release another full-length album was evidently fucking with us). The only real difference between dear, departed Jim and Ian is that The Cult, unlike The Doors (and even the Astbury-fronted, semi-fossilized version of that same band), truly make you believe in their whole native American/New Age spiritualist schtick. Authenticity in rock music, as in anything important, is critical. So while I can honestly tell you that I’m still enamoured with Ian‘s slick, post-punk pirate phase, circa. ‘She Sells Sanctuary’ and ‘Fire Woman’, I can, with equal honesty, tell you that “Choice Of Weapon” is a perfectly listenable return to form for The Cult, free of Doors-taint and with a few important things to say

“Choice Of Weapon” isn’t exactly an (r)evolution in The Cult‘s sound. The band’s heavy-blues/hard rock sound is pretty much as you remember it, and is perhaps best illustrated by songs like the chugging opener ‘Honey From a Knife’ and the rather excellent ‘Lucifer’. Astbury‘s voice is in top form.It’s one of rock’s more potent substances, and the fact that its effectively gone unchanged for the past 20 years or so is probably The Cult‘s greatest asset. The band’s more soulful ballads (The Cult don’t seem to write songs about girls any more, so these are nature/big-idea ballads more than anything else) certainly do the job of mixing up the tracklist, but they’re also the weakest songs on the album. Don’t get me wrong, Astbury and co. can still deliver the goods; it’s just that The Cult work best when they’re pushing the listener forward, and tracks like the meditative, sprechgesang ’Wilderness Now’ don’t do a great job of keeping your attention.

Lyrically, the band’s focus is largely on issues of spiritual bankruptcy and our connection (or lack thereof) to the primal wilderness heart in all of us. It makes for some potent listening, and brings me back to the notion of authenticity. Astbury actually believes this stuff. He’s completely embraced this ‘wolf-child’ identity and honestly believes we’re losing touch with something important. He’s probably right, which is to say he’s definitely right. So while I’m still raising an eyebrow whenever I see Ian‘s feathery-cowboy hat regalia in whatever rock rag he’s turned up in, “Choice Of Weapon” is an intellectually deep album, full of plenty of good lyrics, and a message worth hearing.

It’s been said by naysayers and rock critics alike that The Cult haven’t had a decent album in the better part of a decade (or more!) and I wouldn’t exactly disagree with them. It doesn’t help that Ian Astbury has occasionally ditched the band to go LARP’ing with the remaining Doors. But “Choice Of Weapon” is a worthy entry to their discography, and stands up next to “Electric” and “Love” as some of the band’s finest work. Guess I can give Ian a break about the Morrison connection for now. 8/10

A part of Ian Astbury’s heart will always be in Hamilton. It’s the last place he remembers his family being together. It’s also the place he learned how to stand up to bullies.

Astbury, lead singer of seminal British rock band The Cult, spent seven years in Hamilton, moving here with his family in 1973 from England at the age of 11, attending Glendale high school and even working for a spell at Stelco.

Those times weren’t always good. Some of his Hamilton memories are nightmarish. It’s the place where he was bullied as a child and the place where both of his parents contracted cancer. He leg still hurts from the time he was dragged through a Hamilton intersection by a car.

Yet Astbury, who turns 50 this month, views his years here as vital. Hamilton is the place that hardened him for the life of a rock star.

“Hamilton was very formative for me,” Astbury says in an interview from his home in Los Angeles. “It made me who I am. For that I am very grateful. You don’t realize when you go through these events that they’re preparing you for something else.”

The interview was arranged to discuss The Cult’s new CD, Choice of Weapon, which hits stores and download sites on Tuesday. It’s the Cult’s first album in five years, but Astbury is happy to spend much of the interview talking about his Hamilton years.

When he arrived here in 1973, Astbury had trouble fitting in. He spoke with a thick English accent and knew nothing about hockey, football or baseball. He made friends with the outsiders — new immigrants and all-around misfits.

“I was definitely a punching bag for the jocks at school,” he recalls. “Having your head rammed into lockers isn’t fun. It was rough. I was bullied. But then I got to be 16. I knocked a couple of kids around, and that was it. I was sick of it. I retaliated and that was it. Tough city, tough environment.”

Astbury, who reached international stardom with The Cult during the late ’80s, hadn’t started singing during those Hamilton years, but his musical roots formed here.

“The people I ran with were all into music,” he says. “We were dyed-in-the-wool punk rock fans. It was ’77 and ’78. Punk rock was really important. We listened to a lot of radio, Iggy Pop and New York Dolls. I was always a big David Bowie fan.” (And, yes, he was aware of local bands like Teenage Head and the Forgotten Rebels.)

Astbury dropped out of high school in Grade 11 to take a job bussing tables in a local restaurant. His mother was ill with cancer and his father’s engineering business wasn’t doing well.

The Astburys returned home to the United Kingdom for a brief period in the late ’70s to allow Ian’s mother to die near her family. When they returned to Hamilton in 1980, Astbury took a labourer’s job at Stelco, earning just enough money to get him back to Britain.

He set up shop in Liverpool, a hotbed of post-punk new wave with bands like Echo And The Bunnymen, and The Teardrop Explodes. Astbury fell into the scene. After seeing the film Apocalypse Now, he also learned to appreciate the darker sounds of The Doors.

Punk, new wave and The Doors all came together in the heavy rock of The Cult, the band Astbury formed with guitarist Billy Duffy in 1983. The band hit it big with the 1985 album, Love, and song She Sells Sanctuary and remained a dominant force into the ’90s.

The Cult has gone through lineup changes, law suits, substance abuse problems, a couple of breakups and reunions, but Duffy and Astbury continue to create the same style of dark, guitar-infested rock that took the world by storm 25 years ago.

“We’ve been with each other longer than with any of our partners, marriages or divorces,” Astbury said about his sometimes strained relationship with Duffy. “The chemistry really works for us in the room. I feel this record is very integrated. It’s probably one of the best we’ve made.”

Astbury has been working out for the past six months to get into shape for the heavy touring schedule that awaits the band after Choice of Weapon’s release. Three years ago, he underwent hip surgery to repair years of punishment that includes an auto accident in Hamilton at the age of 15.

“Playing concrete stages, jumping off stages, and I did have four or five motorcycle wrecks, as well,” he says. “All that wear and tear completely destroyed my left hip. So I had what you call a resurfacing. I’ve now got a pound-and-a-half of titanium in my left hip.

“Before I had the surgery, I was literally being carried off stages. The pain was intense, it was wretched. It was horrible, I became depressed.

“I think that’s maybe why some of the lyrical content on this record is very introspective.”

Ian Astbury's struggles provide ammo for new Cult album 'Choice of Weapon'

Associated Press

Sunday, May 20, 2012 1:10 PM GMT

TORONTO - Before Ian Astbury and the Cult made "Choice of Weapon," the Hamilton-reared rock howler was starting to believe he might never take up musical arms again.

After 2007's "Born Into This" came out, Astbury went through a difficult period. He suffered through a bad breakup and then his body began to fail him: a lifetime of hopping around stages, running long distances to stay in shape and wrecking motorcycles started to lead to the deterioration of his hip.

"I was being carried off stages in tears," Astbury recalled during a recent interview at a Toronto rock club, slouched on a dark velvety couch.

"It was brutal, and I just couldn't continue.... I'd beat myself into the ground and the body just went, 'EEERH,'" added the 50-year-old, imitating the sound of a car screeching to a sudden halt. "I've got a pound and a half of titanium in my hip. I was lying on a hospital bed in the Upper East Side in New York in the winter, looking out the window watching these barges go up and down, the snow coming down.

"I was just sitting there thinking: 'I'm done.... I ain't going nowhere. This is debilitating.'"

So, Astbury took it easy for a while, enjoying a "sedentary" period. He read, he explored New York, he found, well, sanctuary at a Shambhala centre in the city.

Then Cult guitarist Billy Duffy rolled through town, and Astbury started to feel that familiar itch. They wrote two songs together — "The Wolf" and "Wilderness Now" — and then they kept writing more. Ultimately, they were armed with enough tunes to finish "Weapon," which hits stores Tuesday.

From chugging opener "Honey From a Knife" to the reverb-clouded closer "This Night in the City Forever," "Choice of Weapon" aims for a primal urgency that makes clear the relief Astbury feels to be back behind a microphone. Conjuring the band's usually foreboding hard rock, the Cult sound newly cohesive musically — owing, in part, to the fact that this marks the first time in the group's sometimes tumultuous run that they've retained the same lineup for consecutive records.

And over and over again — especially on songs like the brooding "Life > Death" and chiming "Elemental Light" — Astbury sings about redemption and resilience.

"Perhaps when you've had success, you can cruise a bit. But then this record was very different. We were out of that place," said Astbury, a Brit who spent a portion of his childhood living in Ontario.

"There's a redemptive quality. Redemption in terms of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat."

But while Astbury says he's thrilled with the "cinematic" new album, his difficult period isn't far from mind. Even as "Weapon" began taking shape, Astbury struggled.

"I went through incredible self-doubt," said Astbury, clad in a pair of sunglasses despite the dim interior of the vacant rock club surrounding him.

"One of the hardest things was the physical (aspect). I mean, you put on weight and people go, 'Ahh, look at him! What happened to the kid who was running around in 28-waist jeans?'

"It took a while to move through that and be OK with that," he added. "I didn't want to be objectified.... Now, you're older and you've got weight on you and it's a crime. It's criminal."

Indeed, Astbury seems to still be coming to terms to the changes in his career and his image.

The adjustment in his demeanour is evident when a photographer asks Astbury to strike a rock-star pose. Shaking his head, Astbury declines and replies: "That's not me ... I'm Zen."

"It's not about me being on the cover of a magazine anymore," he said. "I went through that, I did that.... We've been entertainers, we've been pop stars, we've been on the cover of (U.K. pop magazine) Smash Hits with makeup on and heart paint on my face.

"That's gone. I'm not that child anymore."

But looking back, Astbury says he was never necessarily comfortable with rock-star trappings. He discusses how the band had a golden opportunity to move into the next stratosphere of rock stardom following the release of 1989's "Sonic Temple" — the Cult's third straight album to reach double-platinum certification in Canada — but never capitalized. His relationship with Duffy was falling apart when they recorded the follow-up, 1991's "Ceremony," and that record initiated a commercial tailspin that the band has never been able to reverse.

Astbury said that at the time, he just wasn't comfortable with the band becoming drastically bigger, especially at a difficult period in his personal life when his father was dying of cancer.

"It was a very difficult, bittersweet moment, having the keys handed to us," he said. "The next level after where we were was stadiums ... and I was like, I can't do that. It's not where I want to be. I can't make those kinds of concessions and compromises. It's too much to ask. I can't be that guy."

Duffy, he said, disagreed and felt the band should have been continuing its ascension. Their relationship was notoriously rocky at that point in the band's career, which makes it all the more impressive that they're still collaborating two decades later.

"I'm not going to try to shape Billy into my version of what I think he should be, and I think he's learned to accept that he's in a band with me," Astbury said of their relationship.

"He chose to be in a group with Ian Astbury. He didn't choose to be in a band with some generic rock 'n' roll singer. Probably life would have been a lot easier. He'd probably be playing stadiums now.

"But maybe it's a blessing and a curse."

Still, Astbury betrays a note of dissatisfaction when sizing up the band's legacy. And perhaps that's why, in part, he couldn't leave the Cult behind.

"For whatever reason, the Cult's never really fully connected. Those elements never fully lined up. A lot of our trophies were in other people's trophy cabinets — certainly, artists who we came up with were given acclaim (for) a road that we built or were part of building," he said, arguing that the band's influence on hard rock has been occasionally overlooked.

"We've never even really been recognized by our industry. Never fully embraced. So OK. Where do you go with that? You stay in the wilderness. You stay outside."

Steel resolve The Cult's Ian Astbury does his best to avoid labels By Ted Shaw, The Windsor Star

The polluted air of a steel refinery was enough to convince The Cult's Ian Astbury there was a brighter future with music.

In 1980, three years before The Cult emerged during the British punk movement, Astbury went to work at the Stelco plant in Hamilton, Ont., mopping up around the machinery.

Astbury carries that memory with him, calling the experience "cathartic" and, in a psychical sense, an influence on the music.

The following year, Astbury was back in Brixton, England and helping form Southern Death Cult with guitarist Billy Duffy. The band name was progressively shortened to just The Cult, and the music customized with bits of punk and hard rock.

As the '80s evolved so did the band's streamlined sound. The Cult enjoyed international hits with the likes of Edie (Ciao Baby), She Sells Sanctuary, Rain, and Fire Woman.

Astbury turned 50 this week and recently talked about The Cult's first studio album in five years, Choice of Weapon. He and Duffy, the two original members, have also embarked on a North American tour which will bring them to Windsor's Great Canadian Beaverfest, June 2, at the Riverfront Festival Plaza amphitheatre.

Astbury was 11 when he moved with his Canadianborn father and siblings to Hamilton. They spent five years there before the kids returned to Britain to be with their mother, who had cancer.

When she died, Astbury and his sister wanted to return to Canada, but immigration officials said they'd lost their status as landed immigrants.

"It was ridiculous," Astbury said. "I really identified with being partly Canadian. It was part of my psychic makeup. The experience had a cathartic effect on me."

He stayed in Canada just long enough to buy a ticket back home, learning along the way you make your own breaks.

Throughout its career, The Cult has been stamped, indexed, and filed, like The Prisoner of the 1960s TV show. But Astbury resists labels like he distrusts borders of any kind.

"We've had every tag put on us, from positive punk to Gothic, post-modern, post-modern hard rock, active rock," he said. "The self-imposed elite have set themselves up as custodians of culture, and choose to put us in categories."

Southern Death Cult was a punk band when it first came out in 1983. But it wasn't long before the sound took on a variety of shapes.

"The sound," said Astbury , "was industrial. Hard blues."

The new album has that and more, a visceral mixture of metal and rock.

Astbury and Duffy have had an on-and-off relationship over the years. "We're grown guys," Astbury said. "We have different lives. We both have kids."

But they prepared for Choice of Weapon by releasing a series of what Astbury calls "capsules," or EPs of new music, in 2010 and 2011.

"I was content to leave it at that, but we soon had record companies banging at our door."

He was reluctant to be locked into another deal, but relented in the spring of 2011.

The band had been working with Chris Goss, a friend of Astbury's and producer of such acts as UNKLE, Queens of the Stone Age and Masters of Reality.

"He worked on about 70 per cent of the album," said Astbury. "But we'd been working with him so long, we felt the need for an infusion of new energy."

They turned to Vancouver's Bob Rock, who'd produced three of their previous albums.

"Bob was gracious to come in and work on material done by another producer. He worked with Billy a lot on countermelodies, and enhanced what (Goss) had done.

The Cult have had more break-ups and reunions in their near thirty-year career than most music fans care to keep track of, caused mostly by the tempestuous relationship between founders Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy. It’s surprising that they have even bothered to make another album, with Astbury declaring as recently as 2009 that “the album is a dead format; we don't have the attention span for albums. The idea of going into a studio and spending a year-and-a-half creating a body of work which you put out is pointless. By the time you put it out, it's already been leaked. It's a year-and-a-half worth's of work down the fucking tubes. We need to put out bite-sized chunks." Consequently, the band’s last two releases, Capsule 1 and Capsule 2 were EPs, released in September and November 2010 respectively.

Then, it was around a year ago that Astbury announced during a concert that The Cult would be recording a new album, and seemingly he and guitarist Duffy had patched up their differences. However, anyone expecting the band to replicate their classic sound might have been put off by Astbury saying “I fucking hate nostalgia. It fucking makes me sick” in an interview.

And so, The Cult’s long-awaited ninth album Choice of Weapon hits the shelves and it doesn‘t disappoint. Duffy is the ace card as always; his way with a straight-to-the-point rock riff hasn’t diminished in all the years he’s been playing. Co-produced by Chris Goss (whose résumé boasts production credits for Kyuss and Queens Of The Stone Age, amongst others) and Bob Rock, the album is a return to form for a band whose last album, 2007’s Born Into This, didn’t exactly set the world alight and was widely critically panned as a result.

Opener ‘Honey From A Knife’ lets you know this is going to be a heavy rock album. Duffy’s crunching guitar runs the show, while Astbury’s voice - which has deepened and mellowed over the years - sounds as strong as ever, making one of the songs on this album that sounds like it’d be a good one to bang your head to live.

The opening riff to ‘The Wolf’ is as close to their classic single ‘She Sells Sanctuary’ as you will find on this album (which is pretty damn close), and is one fans of the band’s earlier music will enjoy most, while ‘Life > Death’ slows things down to a gothic ballad pace, with Astbury almost crooning the vocals in his best Bowie impression.

‘For The Animals’ also has a hint of ‘She Sells Sanctuary’, but only for a few seconds at the start. Astbury recently explained ‘For the Animals’ “reflects the sentiment that we are a raw, visceral animal, independent and beholden to no one. We celebrate that aspect that is also rising in the culture. We go where nature takes us.” Astbury has for a long time been a supporter of Native American culture, which reflects in a lot of his lyrics.

Closer ‘This Night In The City Forever’ starts ominously, with a creeping bassline and gothic organ feel, before building to an epic climax of wailing guitar and screaming vocals and is a fine way to finish off what could well considered to be a comeback album.

Only a few years ago The Cult were written off as dead and gone as a band, with Astbury seemingly happy to pop up in guest spots here and there (including touring as part of a 21st-century incarnation of The Doors and appearing on Slash’s debut album proper), and Duffy doing sporadic solo work. Choice Of Weapon is definitely a return to form, and interestingly, the first time the band has kept the same entire line-up for two consecutive albums. With an extensive tour of the States and Europe to support the album, it could definitely be said: The Cult boys are BACK.

And those Australian tour dates? Nothing has been announced as yet. Maybe someone should start a Facebook campaign!

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/17/PKFK1OGN67.DTL#ixzz1vX3oQcbx The Cult has just released its first new full-length album in five years, "Choice of Weapon." A long time has passed since the British hard-rock band ruled MTV with tunes like "She Sells Sanctuary" and "Wild Flower," but on its ninth studio recording, produced by Chris Goss and longtime collaborator Bob Rock, the group still makes a wonderful racket. We checked in with singer Ian Astbury at his home in Los Angeles. The band performs at the Fillmore next Sunday.

Q: You turn 50 this month. Does that number intimidate you?

A: It's just a number. It's weird because my mum passed on my birthday when I was 17, so I never really celebrate my birthday. I've gone through years without even thinking about it.

Q: Didn't you ever worry about growing old?

A: The first 12 years of being in a band was just a blur. We were in a hermetically sealed life. All the sudden you're on the other side of it and you're 33 years old. It's been said by many scholars that musicians should hang it up at a certain age. Tell that to Lou Reed. Tell that to Bruce Springsteen. I'd like to think we get better with age.

Q: You still work the stage like a regular rock god.

A: Standing still and looking at your pinky is in fashion with so many new bands. I think it's the terror of doing anything wrong.

Q: Well, not everybody gets to tour with Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger of the Doors. What did you learn from inhabiting one of your idols' leather pants?

A: Being able to stand still with authority. You can't pretend to stand still with authority. You have to know the material intimately. Learning the lyrics is one thing, but learning about the intention and subtext was really important. It's all intuition, especially with their music.

Q: You recently did a tour where you played the Cult's 1985 album, "Love." Do you think it's a good idea for bands to go back to their roots?

A: Perhaps. I think there's a freshness and earnestness to those songs. There were no rules. We just got on with it. Doing that definitely did reinject some energy into the band.

Q: There was a time you and Billy Duffy would have thrown each other off the tour bus. How do you get on now?

A: There's a certain respect we have for those records we made, the music we made. We're very different as people. But when we get the chemistry right, we do great work. We've known each other for 30 years, so we can say anything we want to each other. I certainly have opinions about every single note we play, but there are times I just leave it to Billy. It's not about tolerance. It's about respect. {sbox}

Choice of Weapon is the Cult's ninth studio album. Released on Cooking Vinyl, produced by Chris Gross and Bob Rock, Choice of Weapon is a multi-faceted, musical journey that jams on every level.

Singer, Ian Astbury digs deep into his lyrical repartee, while Billy Duffy cranks the guitar repertoires. Backed by drummer John Tempesta and bassist Chris Wyse, Choice of Weapon is a musical joust. The Cult's straight-shooter opener, "Honey from a Knife" pulsates in a rhythmical beat that propels you forward and into the next beautiful song, "Elemental Light". Fueled by Duffy's eclectic guitar skill, every song vibrates with Ian's haunting, shamanic voice - taking you on a magical ride - from the spell of "Lucifer" to the amazing "Wilderness Now" to the visional "The Night in the City Forever".

Choice of Weapon is a perfect arrangement of musical craftiness that barrages the senses each and every time you listen. It's an extraordinary showcase of the Cult's long running span as a group. Both die-hard and casual Cult listeners will enjoy: push play and repeat!

The Cult’s frontman Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy have remained the only constants in the British rock band’s nearly 30 year history, minus a four year break from ‘95-’99. “There’s a chemistry that we have that we couldn’t even work out,” Astbury told QMI Agency while in Toronto to promote The Cult’s new album, Choice of Weapon, out May 22. “There’s something between us. Respecting that and being away from it and trying and working with other artists and other musicians, it’s a different thing. The Cult animal is definitely Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy and there’s definitley a chemistry there and you have a healthy respect for that.”

Still, Astbury says they approach life and music quite differently.

“We’re different guys,” said Astbury, 50. “We live different lifestyles. We have different ways of being. Different social circles and everything. But in terms of when we come together. It’s almost like we’re two parts of the same thing and we operate on that modality. When I’m with The Cult I try not to step over into the musical area too much although I do occasionally. (Billy), he’s cheeky, he’s from Manchester, he’s pretty more direct. But it’s good. Actually, he’s a great sounding board ‘cause I have a tendency to maybe go off. Billy can kind of pull it back where it sits in the frame right. ‘Cause I’d go all the way. I’d drag people to a cave in Tibet if I could.”

So far the only Canadian tour date for The Cult is June 2 in Windsor, Ont., but an August or October cross-Canada trek is expected.